An “instant on” feature in a digital versatile disk (DVD) recorder or a personal video recorder (PVR) is desirable for several reasons. Customers have expressed concerns that boot up times of conventional DVD/PVR recorders are too long. Some lower-cost DVD/PVR recorders will take up to several minutes to boot before becoming usable. Furthermore, as the DVD/PVR recorder software becomes more complicated, the boot up time becomes longer. “Impulse recording” is also a desirable feature for a DVD/PVR recorder. To implement an impulse record feature, the DVD/PVR recorder is equipped with a “record” button on a front plane. When the record button is pressed, the DVD/PVR recorder should start recording live programming without an obvious time lag, even if the DVD/PVR recorder was shut off at the time of the button press. Unfortunately, many conventional DVD/PVR recorders wait tens of seconds before the recording actually begins.
Several conventional DVD/PVR recorders reduce the waiting period by maintaining the internal circuitry in a powered condition at all times. Such DVD/PVR recorders give the impression of being switched off by dimming or blanking any indicators on the front panel. However, powering the internal circuitry all of the time does not allow a DVD/PVR recorder to comply with certain government regulation, such as the “Energy Star” logo regulation. An Energy Star compliant DVD/PVR recorder will consume very little power when off.